Hey, it's Mike Waters from the Waters Wake Up Call.
It was all about the veterans this morning, and thank you for the great stories you told.
My grandfather is one of a few soldiers who actually served both in Europe under Patton, isn't it, Collin?
Wow.
But then he also went out to the Pacific and served in the Pacific.
So he's got a medal that's for both theater.
That's
impressive.
Following him, I've got five uncles that served in the Air Force.
My son, my oldest son, is in the Marine.
I've got a grandson in the Marine, my sister in the Army, which was a big surprise to me considering that she was a Peter County beauty queen one year.
Oh, really?
And she was just out of high school, so I was like, yeah, really?
You went in the Army?
Yeah, it doesn't go with the stereotype, but God bless your
sister.
Yeah, yeah.
And her husband was actually over in Mogadishu when the hostages went down.
He was there and fighting to get back out.
I was a veteran, but I wasn't in any war.
It's not about being in war, it's about serving your country in any capacity.
I was in Fort Jackson, and I met my husband.
We were stationed in Germany.
Well, thank you for your service, Veteran Wendemwanda.
That was 82 through 84.
My mom gave all my uniforms to the Waterloo Playhouse.
Were you cool with that?
Yeah, they were a different style.
I'll have to do that.
I'm
sure it was the thank you for your service whistle,
right?
Oh, well, those guys
only want one thing, Wanda.
I hope you kept walking.
Yeah.
The other two were wounded in action.
Did they all serve at the same time?
Yes, World War II.
World War
II.
Actually, I got more than that, but them were the ones that were wounded.
The other two.
You don't have to be wounded to be celebrated as a veteran, you know.
Well, there is Robert Steen, which was killed in action.
There's Elmer Steen that was served over in England, Russell, and Richard.
All right.
Okay.
Sounds like
you got a real, uh, real brave family.
Yeah,
they're not wussies like some people think they
was.
Of course not.
I'm the wussy.
So there.
I'd love
to dedicate it to them guys.
Absolutely.
Done.
Thank you.
My great uncle was a veteran of the First World War.
He was sent down first to the Mexican border in 1915.
When he was back in 1916, he was swimming down at the Cedar River.
They used to have to beach.
at Ellis Park there, right on the riverfront.
Anyway, a cry went out into the air for help.
He swam out and rescued a woman who was drowning, brought her back to shore.
A year later, he was in France, and he was wounded in one of those major battles.
In the hospital in France, the nurse attending was one and the same.
She was the woman that he had saved from bowing to the river.
The other story is, my father, on January 1st, 1945, is
Captain came to him and said, if the Germans are pushing, we don't know where they're coming from.
I need you to get your squad together and go out and blow some trees.
He was an engineer in the 14th Armored Division.
And then he goes, Captain Diller, my half-track driver, the corporal, he's waked out on a section eight.
He's in the hospital.
We need every man that can walk.
So he put his squad together, threw a few cases of dynamite into the half-track to blow trees and set up a barricade out in the mountains.
They drove up.
a mountain road, came around to Ben and there was a German Panzer division sitting there with their engines off.
All hell broke loose.
They started firing on them and they had all this dynamite in this half-track.
The half-track driver waged out and rolled the half-track over the embankment.
My father was pinned by his wrist.
He woke up with a German machine gun.
barrel right between his eyes and with his peripheral vision he looked over and seen one of his squad members was dead with a bullet between his eyes they took him prisoner and basically
He spent the rest of the war in prison camps, four of them.
They kept moving him back after the Battle of the Bulge.
They moved him back farther and farther.
He ended up in Mooseburg.
And when an American scout chief fired on the camp, all the guards moved to the front end of this camp.
There was 120,000 Allied prisoners there, and they didn't know they were there.
And he escaped.
He ran out the gate.
He stole a bicycle and beat it down the road and ran into his own unit.
They took him to his captain, Dillard, and there was no food.
He weighed 60 pounds when he escaped.
When they took him, you know, they took him into his captain, he told his captain, he goes, I want to go back and kill those sons of...
because they were poorly mistreated in the German prison camp.
Yeah, I can imagine.
And he goes, Bob, there's nothing left of you.
Awesome, both of them.
Thank
you.
Well, yeah, they're in my book.
I'm working on maybe someday I'll forward it to you.
Have a great day, Mr. Waters.
All
right, you too, man.
Thanks.
You know, shout out to family members, my son, my grandson, Marine, my uncles that were all.
in the Air Force to my grandfather who was in World War II in the Army.
Yeah, you told me those great stories yesterday, just the very impressive ways that they served.
Well, I got another one that I got that's a really good story.
Some years back here in Sea Rapids, I
the honor and privilege to meet Colonel Robert Ray.
Now, this is not the same Robert Ray that was Governor of Iowa.
But this gentleman was actually a survivor of three and a half years, Japanese prisoner of war, and a survivor of the baton death march.
Wow.
Now, one of my sons was kind of young at the time, and when he was getting for foreign health, he went and lived with his daughter, and he invited me to come out with my son when my son was 12, and he spent about four hours
showing us maps and talking about the whole experience of being a prisoner of war with the Japanese, of maps of where the prisoners had escaped and different things about the whole, just the whole story about it.
When we were done, his daughter came up to me and said, you know, I am so glad you guys came out.
My dad would never talk to me about his experiences.
And I actually got to hear exactly what he went through.
and what other people went through.
Well, I can't, I can't, I just can't imagine how she felt hearing that.
She was real happy.
But, you know, meeting somebody that had gone through all of that during the Philippines was just a privilege and honor to do that.
And then for take the time to go over all this stuff with my son, that he was, was just, was just great.
I mean, that had to be riveting those stories.
The brutality that they went through.
and prisoners of war, the Americans went through.
You just couldn't really comprehend it now at all.
I mean, the baton death march, if the soldiers were wounded, the Japanese unit used them for bandit practice at night.
If any civilian tried to give any water to any of the prisoners on this march, the Japanese soldiers immediately butchered up, killed them.
And it wasn't nice, I was just, they aggressively went after him.
Inhuman.
It was, it was really an honor to meet somebody like that, a privilege.
And from what his daughter was saying, and she had never known any of this, and I can't imagine, you know, how she felt, and you hear about, and that had to be extremely traumatic for him to actually be able to talk about it in detail.
What was his state of mind as he was telling you all this?
Oh, his state of mind.
was excellent I mean he when I first met him he actually told me about when he got stationed in the Philippines he was an officer and married and he actually had his wife and then there was another officer with his wife that were on the transport ship taking him to the Philippines
yeah
the only two guys on the ship with their wives with them
some guys have to do that you know it's no way to escape
it was it was really interesting on his story about that but he was a nice
guy
Like you say, what an honor and a privilege to hear a story from that man.
Yeah, like I said, a lot of relatives that were in the military and I'm all proud of all of my brother in Vietnam,
too.
Yeah.
And a happy Veterans Day for all of
them.
I think I speak for everybody in saying we so appreciate your family and your friend, baton death march and all.
Good God.
Yes,
death march.
Happy Veterans Day!
Thank you for your service, by the way, hollanoats.
I salute all the veterans.
Anytime I'm in the grocery stores or anything, I always think of that.
Yep, well, and again, I thank you for your service, jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.
I think I told you my story when I first jumped out of the perfectly good airplane.
That's right.
And I soiled myself.
I know I would have at least soiled myself
if I had done that.
So... You're gonna do it the first time, man.
But after that
It was great.
It was the closest you'll ever get to God in this world.
How high up were you when you jumped?
About 15,000
feet.
I'm afraid of heights.
I would never ever in a million years jump out of a perfectly good airplane.
When you go into the service and you train in the infantry, you're going to be jumping out of an airplane.
Well, you're a better man than I. I
don't jump out of planes much anymore.
Right.
But you'll jump out of your truck every once in a while.
Because how high up is the cab?
10
feet,
maybe.
Well, that's pretty high.
I think that's
It's
higher than I've jumped.
And then the next day, nothing.
He was supposed to accept that his brother was gone.
Right.
And so when my dad was 17, he joined the Navy about a year before it was going to be the 50th anniversary.
I called the parks department.
They're in charge of the memorial itself.
So they said they had even thought about the planning of it yet.
So anyway, my sister worked for the government.
And so she called the department of the Navy and they said, you know, the parks department and them were going to get together.
one day in the mail, because he knows nothing about this.
This was a surprise that I was doing for them on their anniversary.
Wow, that's great.
Anyway, so in the mail, he gets from the commander of the Pacific Fleet, he gets this, you know, beautifully handwritten envelope and he has no idea what it is.
he opens it up and it's an invitation to be on the memorial.
And he was, he
He, of course, was brought to tears, and he said, you know, this is better than winning the lottery to me.
Anyway, so he not only got to be on the memorial, he was in the second row, sitting right behind with Cheney and President Bush.
Like I said, it was meant to be.
That is awesome.
What an awesome daughter for you to do that for your dad.
I can't imagine how appreciative he was.
anyway
i'm just glad that i could give him a little happy that he was a veteran of korea
to say happy bachon's day i miss you and also i'm sorry um
brother three of my brothers were veterans so thank you to them
also destroyed behind 11 and 11 is
it about world war one of that it's about world war one right
yep
yeah he
was on the 11th month of the 11th
11th day that we won World War One.
Right.
Yeah.
The 11th hour, 11th day of the 11th month.
Yep.
Yep.
11 a.m.
And the story is my dad who unfortunately has passed away.
He was, he was a supply truck driver.
He was always, always at the front lines.
He could speak German.
So he all prisoners back with him.
He goes, yeah, we turn around and we were thought we were new with
American uniforms.
crossed over the line because the front moved.
he told his partner a couple words in German and German just agreed with him.
Yeah.
So he turned around and he's speaking in German going, yeah, they're stupid Americans and stuff.
We stole their trucking uniforms and why are they going to be surprised?
And he goes, believe it or not, we got back over the lines and never got shot at.
Wow.
Now that's smart and
lucky.
He had to be extremely brave, extremely smart, and extremely lucky.
He had the trifecta that day.
Thank God.
Yeah.
That's a great story.
Thanks for that.
You're welcome, Mike.
I was in the Navy, and one of my first jobs was as a plane captain with F-14 fighter pilots.
And I had a rookie pilot that would not listen to my hand signals.
So I went ahead and got permission from the squadron commander and told
told him buying my hand signals that his plane was on fire.
And that he needed to shut down his engine.
And your commander said, yeah, go ahead, do that.
That'll teach him a lesson.
Probably thought he was Mr. Top Gun himself.
Exactly.
I was actually with Top Gun.
We have 24 gun fighters.
That is awesome, Vicki.
So thank you, of course, for your service.
Oh, you're welcome.
When did you serve, Vicki?
I was in from 85 to 89.
So yeah, around the time the Top Gun came
out.
Tom Cruise was actually on base
when I was
there.
Wow, like just checking the place
out.
They were filming part of my hangers actually in that movie.
Vicki, sounds like you weren't even going to tell me that unless I asked.
I'm glad I asked.
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